A trade body has urged 9,000 advisers to appeal to the Treasury select committee in a targeted campaign against rising regulatory costs.
In recent weeks advisers have been encouraged to lobby their local MPs about the consequences of a hardening professional indemnity insurance market and the increases to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme levy.
Earlier this week the Personal Finance Society produced a template letter and a number of advisers have written to their local MPs urging action on the funding structure and cost of the lifeboat scheme.
But the Impartial Financial Advisers Association has warned this tactic is not enough, producing its own letter template which specifically asks MPs to appeal to the Treasury select committee, which the trade body claims is the only authority with oversight over financial regulation.
This comes after earlier this week calls for reform to the FSCS risked falling on deaf ears amid a refusal by the economic secretary to the Treasury to accept responsibility for setting the lifeboat scheme's levy.
The industry's hot potato was passed back to the Financial Conduct Authority when John Glen MP maintained the lifeboat scheme, and hence its levy, was independent from the government.
Garry Heath, director general at the IFAA, said this rebuttal was a result of advisers directing their calls for action to the wrong authority within government.
Mr Heath said: "Asking your MP to write to the Treasury doesn’t work. The FSMA 2000 gave regulation 'independence' from government and parliament.
"As we have seen from recent letter writing campaigns, this allows Treasury ministers to avoid responsibility and they do."
He added: "The Treasury select committee has been given the job of regulatory oversight but is often busy on other things so we need to push our issues higher up their agenda.
"We have created a template for advisers and their firms to send to both Treasury select committee chairman Mel Stride and their MPs to create a review of the all regulation and its costs."
In his own letter to the committee chairman Mr Heath warned consumers were now paying 20p in every pound of their advice fees for regulatory bills, which he said was only set to increase.
rachel.mortimer@ft.com
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